Before You Buy 147 (Transcript)
Show Tease:
Coming up! We have the latest Microsoft Smartwatch. We’re going to take a look
at the Arco Smart Home. We’re very smart this week! We’ll also review a 4K
monitor, and I’ve got the newest Amazon Kindle. We’re going to take a look at
the Voyage. It’s all coming up next! Time to watch Before You
Buy. Netcasts you love, from people you trust.
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Leo Laporte: Hey! Welcome to Before You Buy the
product review show on the TWiT network where we get the latest greatest stuff
and give it to our staff, and find out what it’s like to really use it in the
real world. We’re actually going to kick things off with a friend of the
network. My buddy Daniel Rubindo who is at the, now,
I’ve got to get it right, Windows Central.
Daniel Rubindo: That’s
right, yeah.
Leo: No more P.
Daniel: Nope.
Leo: It’s just windows Central.com. But
Daniel is an expert on Windows phones, all things Microsoft. And he has the new
Microsoft. I call it a watch, it does tell you the time, but it’s really more
of a sport band, right? The Microsoft band.
Daniel: Yeah. It crosses a lot of boundaries.
So I’ve got it right here. One of a few of them that are out
there on the market. And it’s definitely a device that’s not quite a
smartwatch, but not quite a fitness band. It’s a little bit of everything, and
I think because of that it makes a real interesting device. At
least for Microsoft.
Leo: It looks funny and I know Paul Thorott has kind of complained and I’ve read others, in
fact your review as well says you never really get used to have it on your
wrist.
Daniel: Yeah, so I’m a little cautious on this because
I think it’s just like shoes. Some people find a pair of shoes comfortable, some people don’t find it comfortable. When it
comes to this, it’s a little larger than say your typical fit bit. I’m a big
force user and I so I love using those kind of
devices. I also wear a watch, so for me having things on my wrist isn’t a big
deal. But yeah, some people have an issue with this, and don’t like the constriction.
Leo: It also doesn’t curve, it’s straight. On the top.
Daniel: Yeah, so I don’t personally find it any
different than any other wearable I’ve ever put on, and I have no problems
sleeping with it. But some people do. It’s one of those things if you have a
Microsoft store, definitely go try it. I hear by through the holiday season
it’ll be in Microsoft stores, but then they’ll go to retailers, so you should
be able to go to Best Buy, for instance, and pick this up, probably in a couple
weeks, or a month or so.
Leo: What does your girlfriend thing?
Daniel: So she’s like really small. She’s about
5 foot 3 like a 110 pounds. She loves it. She actually
thinks it’s one of the…of all the technology I have, and I have a ton of it,
she doesn’t find any that impressive. But this thing she really, really likes.
Leo: How interesting.
Daniel: Yeah, she’s tiny, she has no problems
wearing it and she loves it. Mostly because she can do her
phone stuff without pulling her phone out of her pocket.
Leo: So it’s the functionality she really
likes.
Daniel: right. Yeah.
Leo: Tell me about that. What does it do?
Daniel: So it does do fitness stuff. It has a
heart rate monitor on board. And that’s optical, that’s really interesting. But
that’s becoming more frequent these days with these fitness devices. It has GPS
built in, which only comes on if you’re going into run mode, and even then it’s
optional. So if you’re going to run on a treadmill you don’t need to put it on
and waste the battery. It has all sorts of smartphone functions which work
across the IPhone, Android, and Windows phone. So you can see incoming calls,
you can see email, text messages. You can see the current weather. If you’re
using Windows phone you can invoke Cortana directly through it. And even dictate
a text message, for instance. And so probably one of the more unique things it
has a UV sensor, which is kind of interesting. It has a little light sensor on
top and you can basically sample the sunlight and it’ll tell you how intense
the UV rays are, and what the average is you’ll get sunburned.
Leo: that’s unique.
Daniel: Yeah, so I think it brings a lot of
unique stuff to the market. At least this early stage. It also gets about two days battery life.
Leo: Ah!
Daniel: Which comes in around
36 hours. I wouldn’t say it’s actually 48 hours. The good thing is it
can charge to 80 perfect in 30 minutes. So what I’ve been telling people is,
and it makes sense, before you go in the shower, throw it on the charger, by
the time you’re done, you’ll have your charge for the day with no issues.
Leo: That’s just about right actually. While
you’re getting ready in the morning it’s all charged up so you can wear it
continuously. You wear it at night too.
Daniel: Yeah, so it has a sleep mode to it,
which is common with these sort of trackers. It
determines, during the night, I’ll measure your heart rate, it’ll also
determine how much you’re moving. And then in the morning it’ll give you a very
detailed graph as far as your sleep goes. Now I was a sleep technician for a
few years in New York City.
Leo: You were?
Daniel: Yeah, and so I’m very familiar with
sleep technology and the intuition behind it. And my own experience with this
so far is it’s actually goes very well with what I think my sleep has been. In
the sense that it detects when you’re obviously moving around, but also a deep
sleep and light sleep. So it separates those two and then gives you a rating
for it. And it’s, I had a pretty terrible night sleeping last night. I mean I
slept, but I didn’t get my deep sleep that I needed, which is called Stage 3
delta sleep. And I felt that way when I woke up, and when I looked at it, it
said I had 0 deep sleep. So it was like, Fitbit
doesn’t quite go into that detail at all, so…
Leo: I’ve seen a number of these and the
problem is we, unlike you, don’t have anything to judge it against. So you know,
I’ve even used those sleep Android phone software that you put on your bed and
it records you snoring and stuff. But all of these things give you graphs and
you look at them and go, I don’t know am I tired, I only had 4 hours of deep
sleep, is that enough? Too much? So you think, giving
you’re experience as a sleep technician this is pretty accurate, pretty reliable?
Daniel: Yeah, I’m actually pretty impressed
with it. It’s going to be interesting to see how it goes over the next few days
but I’ve been using it about 3 or 4 nights now and I generally like the
results. Now you still have to turn it on for the sleep mode, but for my
understanding Microsoft is going to go have a fix out soon, where it’ll
automatically detect basically when you’re going to sleep, and go into that
mode automatically. I believe Fitbit can now do that as well. So that’s sort of
the next generation of this sleep stuff, but I do find the information it
provides to be more detailed than what some of the other devices are out there
on the market, especially because of the heart rate.
Leo: Tell me about the charging, because
that is something that variable with all these on the market. Some of them have
pogo pens, you have to put it in the right place. Some
are wireless charging, some have a docking station, and how do you charge this?
Daniel: So it comes with a single cable, its
USB, it doesn’t come with a little wall wart thing, so you either have to plug
into a computer or if you have one you can plug into that. And it’s simply a magnetic charger, it reminds me very much of an Apple design
where it attaches to the bottom and it’ll clip on. You don’t need to press it,
you can blindly do it. It has very strong magnets and it’ll attach that way.
Leo; But it
is a proprietary solution.
Daniel: Correct. They used USB from my
understanding because it’s water resistant but not water proof and in order to
get that water resistant standard, I believe its IP 76 I think it is, you can’t use a USB type connection, so they have their
own proprietary one.
Leo: Can you take this in the shower?
Daniel: I wouldn’t recommend it. They don’t
recommend immersing it in liquid. To be honest you could probably do it and it
would survive. So if you forgot accidently I think you’d be okay. But they
don’t recommend immersing it in liquid. Washing the dishes, out in the rain,
running obviously in sports, it would be totally fine.
Leo: Now you can, because it’s got Cortana,
I would guess it works best with Windows phone. But does it work with other
phones?
Daniel: So all the functions work across all
the devices except for Cortana. Which, because it’s actually going throw the
phone for the Cortana system, so Cortana isn’t on it, you just invoke it though
the phone. And from the way I understand, when it comes to IOS and Android,
those services for Siri and Google voice don’t work through Bluetooth. It’s
sort of a, I don’t think it’s opened up for APIS quite yet.
Leo: But notifications work on IOS and
Android.
Daniel: Everything else works.
Leo: That’s cool.
Daniel: Yeah, notifications. Phone
calls.
Leo: It’s Bluetooth LE, what is the
communication method?
Daniel: We’re not 100% sure. I think you can do
Bluetooth 4.0 LE, but it at least, I tested it on some windows phones that
don’t have LE enabled, and it still worked.
Leo: Regular Bluetooth then.
Daniel: Those were Windows phones though. So
perhaps Microsoft was doing some sort of short cut themselves. So it should
work across most all devices that came out in the last year or two.
Leo: So the pros and cons, on this, and by
the way, its’ not available yet but will be available soon at Microsoft stores.
Is that right?
Daniel: Well it’s in some stores. You can
actually try it.
Leo: So you could go and try it. Okay.
Daniel: yeah, at the very least they’ll have it
out on display. There’s three different sizes, small,
medium, and large. You can use the sizing chart on line, but I definitely recommend
going into a store, and you can actually try it on and see how it fits. And if
you’re lucky they might have some in stock. I’ve heard more stock is coming in,
in two weeks or so. If you go to the store you can put yourself on a waiting
list. You can also try online, although currently they’re sold out. And, you know, there’s sort of a tight supply right now for these but
I think that’ll start ramping up in the next coming weeks.
Leo: So the pros and cons on the Microsoft
band.
Daniel: So the pros, it’s, I think it’s one of
the most innovative devices out there. It’s a perfect blend of the smart watch
stuff, along with the smart band stuff. Without being
unrealistic. In other words, you get that two days battery life and you
know, you can use the different features like GPS and
UV sensor. It’s also cross compatible so if you ever switch smartphones it’s
going to work across Android, IOS, and Windows phone almost exactly the same.
So that’s the pros. The cons, you know, 200 dollars, it’s not the 99 dollar Fitbit
flex, so it’s a little bit more expensive. I still think it’s a fair price but
it’s a little bit more on the high end. Battery life at two days is good, but
it’s not amazing, right. Fitbits can go seven days sometimes. Even more than that, and so you almost never have to charge it. If you use a misfit shine, you just put a battery watch in there and it goes
about 6 months. So if you’re not into charging stuff, I don’t
find it terrible, but it’s not ideal. I think Microsoft found a nice
balance. Every time I tell someone two days that seems to be that cutoff. It’s
just enough where people won’t get mad at it but it’s not ideal either.
Leo: And it is fast charging so it’s not
like you have to charge it all day to get it to go two days.
Daniel: Exactly, yeah.
Leo: How about the comfort. Is that a pro or
a con?
Daniel: It depends. Some people will want
something that will just blend it, right? A Fitbit one is really tiny and you
can just clip in on your pocket. Some people like the bands that are very
light, like the Jawbone up, you know, it just wraps around, and you barely feel
it. For this, I find it totally comfortable, it doesn’t chaff, it doesn’t
bother me, it doesn’t slide around, it’s an adjustable clasp, and so once you
get your size right, you can actually tighten it during exercise and loosen it
during casual wear.
Leo: Ah, that’s nice.
Daniel: And so you can find that perfect, you
know neutral zone of what you find comfortable. But I do recommend people try
to go to the store and put it on and see how they feel about it.
Leo: Buy, try, don’t buy?
Daniel: I say definitely a buy, but this is
obviously, this category of devices is very competitive and there’s a lot going
on with it right now. Apple has their smartwatch coming out, but that’s not
until next year. So I think if you want something for the holiday season, and
this is that perfect blend I think of smartwatch stuff with fitness. I think
it’s a good buy, just because the heart rate, the GPS, UV sensor, and all the,
you know, it’s got ten sensors in it. It’s a pretty
incredible piece of technology.
Leo: It’s one of the few that has GPS in the
watch not relying on the GPS on the phone.
Daniel: Which means, of course, you can leave
your phone at home and go for a run and just have this on and it’ll record the
whole thing.
Leo: That’s a selling point.
Daniel: Yep.
Leo: Very good. Thank you! Daniel Rubindo, he’s editor and chief at Windows Central.com, and
a buy for the Microsoft band! Thank you! Are you going to keep it on?
Daniel: Oh yeah!
Leo: Fight with your girlfriend over who
gets to keep it?
Daniel: She’s got one already, herself. We
definitely like it.
Leo: That’s great. Thank
you Daniel.
Daniel: No problem, Thank you.
Leo: Next we’re going to look at, 4K is all
the rage now and not only in television sets, but computer monitors. We gave
Bryan Burnett our technical director, the new Philips brilliance 4K monitor. 28 inches. Let’s take a look.
Bryan Burnett: This is Bryan Burnett from Before You
Buy and TWiT, and today I’m taking a look at the Philips Brilliance 4K ultra HD
display. The model number is 288P6. So this monitor comes in at a weight of
about 11 pounds and the stand is adjustable with 5.9 inch height, and a 25
degree tilt. There is a touching menu buttons, and one of the nice benefits of
this Philips monitor is a lot of ports. You’ve got your DVI, VGA, HDMI, MHL,
and USB 3.0 ports. So this monitor is 28 inches and since its 4K, it’s running
a resolution of 3840 by 2160. And it looks really nice! It also has built in
speakers, which, you know, as far as monitor speakers go, aren’t the worst, but
they’re definitely not going to replace your 2.1 setup that you might have for
your desktop PC. The bezel around the edges of the monitor
are nice, and it has a nice little silver trim for the Philips logo on
the front. Now to fully test the range of this monitor I enlisted the help of
my favorite gaming PC here at TWiT, the Acer Predator. And the first thing I
did was load up one of the Go pros Hero 4 videos, featuring 4K, and it looked really
nice! The colors are pretty clear and vibrant. So Go Pros 4K video looked
great, but what if I really wanted to stress this monitor with games? That’s
why I decided to play X-wing. Okay, maybe a game that came out in 1998, isn’t the best representation for this monitor, but it
still looked really good. But I did decide to play some Crisis, which couldn’t
run at the max 4K resolution but still looked really good on this monitor! As
for pros and cons, the number one pro is the display. The 4K resolution looks
really nice, the color accuracy is pretty decent, and the second pro would be
the stand. It does have a lot of adjustability. You can manipulate it how you
like. And the final pro is lots of ports. You have a lot of options when using
this monitor. As for cons, the list price of 799 dollars is pretty expensive.
But when looking on Amazon I found it for $579. Which is a
lot more reasonable. And the second con would be the somewhat limited
viewing angle. As for try, buy, or don’t
buy? If you can find this for under 700 dollars, the
4K, this is a really nice 4K display and I give it a buy. But if you’re not
planning on getting a 4K display, be sure not to look at one of these in person
because you might just get hooked. This has been Bryan Burnett for Before You
Buy. Thanks for watching.
Leo: Hey not bad! 580 bucks, I spent, I
don’t even want to think what I spent on my 4K monitor! So a definite buy from Bryan Burnett who runs our equipment over here. Our
technical director we call him for the show. There he is waving at you! Coming
up next, how smart is your home? Shannon Morse, Snubs, is going to try out the Archos Smart home. Shannon.
Shannon Morse: Hey everyone! I’m Shannon Morse from
Before You Buy, and today I have the Archos Smart
Home Starter Kit. So the MSRP on this is $249.99, so a whole whopping 250
dollars. And it includes this tablet, a couple of cameras, two movement tags
and two weather tags. So basically this kit is made to create IFTTT type
programs that will alert you of any kind of changes that are happening in your
household, whether that’s movement or weather changes. The tablet, I’m sorry to
say has a terrible 7 inch screen. There are practically no viewing angles whatsoever, it’s a 1024 by 600 pixel resolution and its
running jelly bean. So kind of old school. It has 4
gigs of memory on the inside with one gig of RAM, but you can increase that memory
size up to 64 gigs with a micro SD card slot, which is located on the side. Now
the camera is 5 megapixels and it can read weather as well as take pictures and
video. You can connect to your WIFI in your household and you can connect VIA Bluetooth
to all of these different devices. Next up you have the cameras, both of these
are 640 by 480 resolution, so not very good quality
there. Both of them take 3 CR 2450 batteries and they have a magnetic base so
that they don’t just roll away. Oh no! These can take photo as well as about 10
seconds worth of video at a time. Next up we have the movement and weather
tags. Both of these tag one Cr4230 battery and they are both Bluetooth and they
stick on to different places with a little sticker on the back. The movement
tags are triggered whenever a door is opened, basically whenever it’s taken
away from a magnet or whenever it’s jostled, so if you stick it on the side of
your monitor and somebody steals your monitor, they’re jostling it, so it would
trigger it. The weather tags are triggered by any humidity changes or
temperature changes. So you can set an IFTTT program to say, if it decreases under 70 degrees F. then take a picture, or something like
that. But there’s kind of a flawed design with this entire idea. You can’t take
the tablet anywhere, it always has to be plugged in.
It always has to be turned on, and in range of all of the devices that are connected
to it. So it basically works as a central hub, and speaking of which, another
flawed problem with this, is you can do any kind of live monitoring and there’s
no live recording. So if you want to just check in on your cats or something
you can’t really do that. You’d have to take a picture or record video. And you
can only set up those IFTTT like rules to trigger these cameras. But on the
other side, rules are really easy to set up in the actual program. They all
worked very well, but they were really, really slow to update. So any time I opened
the door it took a couple of minutes to actually see the pictures show up on
the program. Setup is very easy on both the tablet and other Android devices.
With a free Android app, but it sometimes couldn’t connect, and onetime I found
the Android app on my Nexus five actually just crashed on me. And if this thing
is turned off, it’s not going to connect at all if you’re away from your
household. So the pros of this, it is a very easy setup, it’s really
inexpensive to tell the truth, when you’re coming to a smart home kit. And
there’s practically no installation. You just plug this guy in, and you stick
these where ever you want to. So you can use this in a rental, which is great.
On the con side though, there’s no live monitoring. Which I really, really want
and I want it at an inexpensive price. And the tablet is not mobile, so why
would I use it? I can’t even take this from my bedroom downstairs, or else it’s
going to shut off on me because I’ll have to unplug it. And it’s very, very
slow to update. I hate waiting for several minutes just to see a 10 second
video of my cats at home. So would I buy, try, or don’t buy this? I’m going to
give it a don’t buy. I think they need to switch this
out and just put in a nice little hub device, not necessarily a tablet and then
stick with an upgrading Android, and IOS app, make those better and keep them
free. Again this is the Archos Smart Home Starter
kit, and I’m Shannon Morse with Before You Buy.
Leo: Oh, Shannon did not like that Archos. Shannon Morse host of Tekzilla, and one of our favorite reviewers on Before You
Buy. Thank you Snubs! Chad Johnson is here! The old red head! And
headphones are us. You know, what is it about headphones? First of all, there
are a lot of them and we love reviewing them, it’s kind of fun.
Chad Johnson: yeah, and these are kind of nice. These
are from Sony.
Leo: Sony makes good stuff.
Chad: Sony makes good stuff and they also all
seem to have kind of like a good theme. Sony does, I don’t know, well I know
why, because they have a really, a product line that is kind of all together. So, you know, they have their Z-phone product
line and stuff like that.
Leo: Right. This is in the MDR product line.
Chad: yeah, sort of like that. Exactly. So all their products sort of
have this nice sort of new finish.
Leo: It looks pretty.
Chad: Slick, yeah very pretty stuff. See
these are wireless stuff.
Leo: See I like
that already. No wires.
Chad: Already, really good. Bluetooth
technology, so most, if not all phones nowadays can connect with these. It also
uses an NFC, and Sony has really gone in on NFC.
Leo: They use it for paring right?
Chad: They adore NFC, and so their NFC stuff
is just really nice. So this could work with any Android phone, of course, IOS
right now, still not quite there.
Leo: Alright let’s try it. So do you just
have to tap it to the phone, do I have to turn on NFC?
Chad: Yeah, your phone definitely needs…
Leo: I have NFC turned on. Just tap it to
the phone and it’ll see it.
Chad: It should,
Leo: oh it does.
Chad: A message pops up.
Leo: Are you sure you want to pare the Bluetooth
devise.
Chad: Hit yes.
Leo: And I can send you music.
Chad: Yeah.
Leo: It was that easy!
Chad: Or let me see if I can, here go back
to, I’m going to see if I can start a command by hitting a phone button.
Leo: Can you do something on my phone? Go
ahead.
Chad: I might be able to hit the phone
button. It depends here, I don’t know where we are and what menu or what…
Leo: So what kind of music, is it A2DP, is
that the?
Chad: Now, yes, so yeah that’s the protocol.
It also says on the box that you can use AAC for higher quality sound, even
wirelessly.
Leo: AAC.
Chad: Which I thought it was all going
through A2DP, just like you’re talking about, which is that high quality Bluetooth
spectrum.
Leo: It’s the stereo Bluetooth, not the phones.
Chad: Not the headphone Bluetooth, yeah
exactly. But it says compatible with AAC high quality audio.
Leo: I think that’s a new profile.
Chad: I think this is very new. This is very
new. So this is top of the line, newest specs.
Leo: You want that, because Bluetooth can
really sound bad if you don’t have…
Chad: Yeah, it’ll sound like a phone call!
It’ll sound really horrible.
Leo: That was the easiest paring I’ve ever
done, I can’t believe I’m pared to you.
Chad: Yeah, wasn’t that nice?
Leo: I didn’t have a number or anything, I
just tapped it.
Chad: Now, of course, it’s not that easy on
IOS, which I was using an IOS phone. So, but it’s normal process, you put it in
paring mode, you go look in your Bluetooth settings.
Leo: You still have to do that because they
don’t have NFC.
Chad: They don’t have NFC, yet. So that’s how
I used it.
Leo: Now is it on the ears? It looks like
it’s on.
Chad: It’s on the ear. It’s not an over the
ear headphone. It does rest on the ears, there are leather sort of ear cups
here. And they have…
Leo: They look pretty comfy.
Chad: They are, I
wore it easily for about two hours. Your ears, I’m not a big fan of on the ear ear cups because my ears bend after a while.
Leo: I like them over or in.
Chad: Over or in, exactly, because the cartilage
on my ear I don’t want pressed or moved.
Leo: But some people love these.
Chad: Yes, that’s your preference. I didn’t
have any problem with the padding. This is a nice leather inside right here. These are 30 millimeter drivers. On the sides, you
have a whole bunch of different buttons. You have volume up and down. Which this is independent from your device volume. So the
phone actually works, or the headset is…
Leo: It has a little amp in it.
Chad: Yeah, a little bit of amp. It has your
power, and then you have your multimedia buttons. These, I had kind of an issue
with because to play you push it in and you can kind of, I’m trying to show off
that its rays.
Leo: it’s hard to find, you can’t’ see it
because it’s on your ear.
Chad: yeah, so you push it in to play and
pause, and then you push it up, you actually slide the whole device up to go
back or forward.
Leo: I see. Okay, so there’s a little
tactile situation there going on.
Chad: Right. But I constantly, it felt like
no matter how much time passed, I would always think that I would push it in
basically to activate it and then want to move it. It was just a little
confusing to me, this whole button setup. But it does work, so you can play a
lot.
Leo: You can see what they’re trying to do.
They wanted to do it by touch, because you can’t see.
Chad: yeah, exactly. On the other side you
have noise cancelling.
Leo: Oh these are noise cancelling!
Chad: Yeah, these are noise cancelling.
Leo: Now must planes you can’t wear Bluetooth
headphones on a plane.
Chad: Yes! You’re right actually, I hadn’t
quite thought of that.
Leo: Just want to point out, follow the
rules in your region.
Chad: I hadn’t thought of that. It does have
noise cancelling. I have not been on a plane in the past week that I’ve had
these, but…
Leo: Why not?
Chad: But we have something very similar to
that. A server room, so we went to the server room and I
spend a few minutes in there.
Leo: How was it?
Chad: It was fine, you could still hear a small amount of white noise coming through. It’s
obviously active so when someone talks to you there’s the slight hint that
selects over robotic, like it’s filtering something. Very subtle. But it does cancel out noise. And I have a feeling this is, this noise
cancelling is specifically tuned to what you would experience on an airplane. Because
I could still hear some stuff coming through, but I’m sure a server room sounds
a lot different than an airplane, and they can only filter out so many
frequencies. So that worked just fine. And on the other side there’s a button
for your phone. So if you have SIRI you can use that, if you’re using Google
Commands you can use that as well for that button. Time, the battery life
lasted very long.
Leo: Oh good!
Chad: It was like three days that I got.
Leo: Wow!
Chad: They claim 25 hours of listening, with
noise cancelling on.
Leo: Wow!
Chad: So yeah, and normal use I easily got
through three days, just listening, setting it off to the side before I needed
to charge them up. And it does obviously have a mic so you can take calls, and
stuff like that.
Leo: Okay. So you can wear that in the car…
I guess you can’t wear that in the car, that’s illegal also.
Chad: Actually I did, because I was on a call
and my phone, it was my phones fault, doesn’t do a very good job of
transferring Bluetooth while in a call.
Leo: How’s the mic, did it sound pretty
good?
Chad: Nobody was alike what are you on? What
are you calling me from? So normal mic quality, it doesn’t have a boom, it is
in the cup, but normal mic quality.
Leo: Is it a USB charger? How do you charge
it?
Chad: It is, micro USB, it takes 4 ½ hours to
charge them up.
Leo: Hey I like these.
Chad: Also they’re really light. For a
headphone, they’re not all that heavy. Especially compared to, do you have the
Bose?
Leo; I do,
those are heavy.
Chad: Bose are much heavier.
Leo: These are pressing though. There’s a
lot of pressure on my ears.
Chad: There is. And I feel like their profile
is a little bit kind of wide. It does look like the 70s headset. But yeah, other than that.
Leo: Pros and cons.
Chad: yeah, let me look at my notes and make
sure there’s nothing else. Nothing. So
pros, NFC that wireless.
Leo: Loved that! You saw how quickly that
worked!
Chad: Yep, if you have an android phone,
that’s a really, really nice thing. I like that you can take phone calls on
these as well as listen to music. And the long battery life
for the pros. For the cons, I had an issue with these media buttons. I
just didn’t’ love them all that much. And these don’t fold. They’re always like
this, and they don’t give you a carrying case or anything like that. This is
just all you get in the box.
Leo: And there’s no way to go wired? It
doesn’t have a jack?
Chad: Nope, doesn’t have a jack so it’s
always wireless.
Leo: Price?
Chad: $129.99
Leo: That’s a good price!
Chad: yes, these are much less expensive for
a noise cancelling headphone than the Bose.
Leo: That’s half the Bose.
Chad: The street price is like a dollar
cheaper. $128. So they’re about that price.
Leo: You know what we didn’t ask? How’s the
quality?
Chad: It sounds quietly. Sounds
great. They do have a little bit of that bass boost. It does feel like
they’re amplifying the bass a little bit, but I really enjoy listening to them.
I’ve been on a Queen kick, so listening to all the classic queen.
Leo: We are the champions my friends!
Chad: Yeah, that’s my favorite about them.
Leo: You know Freddy Murphy is a great
headphone torture test. That’s a great idea. So buy, try?
Chad: Buy. I think for the price, for the features,
for the noise cancelling.
Leo: This is nice! I like the wireless.
Chad: …the wireless. You can take calls. The
one whole back might be that they’re on ear instead of over the ear, but you’re
going to know that getting into them.
Leo: The Sony MDR ZX550 BNs.
Chad: And there’s no better way to search for
that. You can search for Wireless Sony, noise cancelling headsets, but yeah,
that’s the best way to search for these is the MDR ZX550 BN. Headphones.
Leo: It’s easy to find Chad, just search for
OMG Chad, you google OMG chad, you’re going to find Youtube.com/omgchad. His great OMG craft show is there. And there are episodes
like all day every day. New stuff all the time.
Chad: Today I uploaded three episodes to OMG
chad, and then OMG craft had its own episode today. So that was my fourth
episode.
Leo: That’s great. If you want to support
Chad, it’s easy to do. He’s on Patreon. That’s
Patreon.com/OMGchad.
Chad: Yep, thank you.
Leo: You’ve got over the thousand, but I
think we need to get more.
Chad: You know what I didn’t realize is that have this pledge that I will make a sandwich and eat it if
you donate a dollar. And I thought I could just do that once. People are
saying, every person.
Leo: That’s 1277 sandwiches!
Chad: No! Every person that
donates more than a dollar. So we have over 200 patrons. So I have to
eat like, sandwiches for days!
Leo: 200 sandwiches!
Chad: Sandwiches for years.
Leo: He’s going to be OMGfat.
Chad: I’m going to be OMG carb by the end of
this.
Leo: You might want to re look into that terms of service.
Chad: I thought I could just do one! Like
here’s the video of me eating a sandwich!
Leo: Send one picture to each of you. Well hey, I’m really thrilled it’s going well.
Chad: No problem! It’s great to see you, we’ll see you soon I hope. And of
course, every Thursday for the Gizwhiz, 5 PM pacific
8 PM eastern time.
Leo: Always fun. Coming up I’m going to
review the newest Kindle. But first this is National men’s health awareness
month. We call it Movember.
Chad: Movember!
Leo: It actually started in Australia, they grow the mustache for Movember.
But then,
Chad: See that’s the problem, because we’ve
got your Harry’s shave kit here. Harry’s is fixing a problem a lot of us have.
In fact, it’s now, it’s like, it’s like a standard, you know you say give away
the razor, make it up on the blades! It’s like a standard expression, everybody understands that all these companies are selling cheap razors and
them reaming you on the price of blades! 4 dollars a blade! Harrys says stop
the insanity. This is the Truman, get it? Harry Truman? This is the Truman kit, it is very affordable, 15 dollars. And you get a
beautiful razor, by the way, save this when you get your kit. This is great for
travel! It has a little ventilation slot here. And that way you don’t cut
yourself as you’re traveling around. A little plastic holder, but these are the
best blades ever. When they started Harry’s the founders said we’ve got to find
great blades. But yet we’re going to sell them for affordable cost, but they
can’t just be stamped in. We have to have great stainless steel blades, so they
went out and they bought the factory, literally, there
are two factories in Germany that make these. They own their own factory in
Germany. Engineered for sharpness, for high performance. Frankly when you’re using those disposable razors it’s like shaving with the
edge of a tin can. Get good blades! And then Harry’s ships them for free to
your front door, and because they make their own blades, and ship their own
blades, you get factory direct pricing that’s very affordable. Let me just show
you, the Truman kit, 15 bucks, you get the razor, you get the blades. How many
blades do you get in the… two blades, plus the one on the razor. You get the foaming shave gel. Ah, that smells good! That really smooth’s the
shave, and of course, Harry’s guarantees your satisfaction. 15 dollars for the
starter kit, it is the month of Movemer, and we know a
lot of guys not shaving to support research for men’s health issues. So get the
Truman, and Harry’s will make a donation to the Movember fund to show their support. And you know what? I’ve got to tell you, even if
you’re growing a beard, you still need to shave! You don’t want a neck beard
guys!
Chad: Manscaping is
a thing, and it’s needed!
Leo: Thank you! Thank you Chad! Do not just
grow it! You’re not Zack Alafanackis. Okay! A little
trimming, so you still need a great razor blade, in fact, it’s even more
important, whether you’re growing your beard, or you want an amazing shave,
Harry’s is a company you can feel good about. Go to Harry’s, get 5 dollars of
your first purchase with a code BEFOREYOUBUY, and support Movember.
5 dollars off your first purchase only. Harry’s.com. Use the offer code
BEFOREYOUBUY to save 5 dollars off your first purchase at checkout. Happy Movember! Are you going to grow a mustache?
Chad: Oh gosh! I would look like shaggy from
Scooby doo.
Leo: I did it this year. Movember first, Movember second, Shave. It’s not that I can’t,
I don’t want to! It’s itchy!
Chad: Nobody wants to see me with like a
three hair beard. Nobody wants to see that.
Leo: You’re very nicely groomed. You look
good.
Chad: Thank you. Thank you.
Leo: I want to show you. Now I’m very
excited. Do you read books?
Chad: I mostly listen.
Leo: Me too. And I say mostly because
sometimes I like to listen and read, and with Amazons Whisper sync, I can do
that. But you have to have a reading device. You could, you know, Kindles app, I’ve got to say this is an interesting product because
a Kindle app is available on every platform. So you can always use your phone
or your IPad to read, but there’s nothing like a Kindle. Seven years old this
month, the first Kindle was 400 dollars. Then, and every year Amazon has got
them smaller, lighter, better functionality, and lower priced. I think now the
starter kindle is less than 80 dollars. So you might ask what if they said cost
was no object, what would be the best Kindle you could design? And that’s this,
this is the, and I should take the case off because I have the Amazon origami
case on here. I don’t know if I can get it off easily. This is the Kindle
Voyage. And this is what, this is basically the no
compromise EBook reader from Amazon. So a couple of things have changed, even
since the Paper white. It is like the Paper white, in fact, let me show you up
close. It glows from within. Which means not only, the Kindle has always been
great on the beach in direct sunlight because it’s e ink page is really
designed to be a reflective surface, just like an actual book. But what’s
different about the Paper white and this Kindle is, yeah I made the text big so
you can see it. It glows from within. In fact, what’s really cool about the
voyage is it has an ambient light sensor and it will adjust the glow. So if you
are reading in the dark, as I often do, it will dim it so it doesn’t hurt your
eyes. It doesn’t do it right away, it slowly dims it over time so that you can
read quite comfortably in darkness but, of course, it’s great in the beach. But
the key to this is the new E-ink technology that gives you 300 dots per inch.
300 dots per inch, now we live in a Retina Era, we’re all used to very high
resolution displays. 300 dots per inch is essentially what the laser writer,
the first laser printer was. You don’t see any dots at this size, and that’s
why I blew the text up. Of course, one of the things we love about the kindle,
my mom loves is you can make a book any text size you want, so if you are
having a hard time reading you can make the text big and easy to read. Actually
I usually keep it around here, which is actually fairly big, but I just like
that size, it’s easy to read. They’ve got new kinds of controls, you notice
it’s a touch screen, so I can touch the screen and go to the settings. Many of
the cool amazon features, the X-ray feature, which will give you more
information about the thing you’re looking at or the thing you’ve selected.
It’s got the ability to see other people’s selections, I love that. Because you
can see what people think is important. It has a dictionary and all of the
features if you’re an Amazon user you’re probably used to. The touch also
extends to page turns. By the way, notice the new page turns, it’s the fastest
kindle ever, and one of the problems with E-oink in the past has been the page turn
has been quite visible, because the way a kindle works is not like a regular
screen, it’s more like an Etch-a sketch. The text, the darkness is little
electronically charged balls that adhere to the screen, and so a page turn is
the process of kind of demagnetizing the screen, letting the balls fall off,
like shaking an etch-a-sketch, and then re-magnetizing it where the text needs
to be, that’s always been kind of a disruptive experience on the kindle. And
I’m just going to show you more of these, it’s so fast
now that it really is a very nice page turn experience. So you can tap the
screen, I don’t like to because I don’t want any fingerprints on the screen. It
also has a new control feature. We’ve got switches on the left and right hand
side. That’s great, I’m a lefty. Very important to me, that it is agnostic
about which hand you’re using. Squeeze the line, you can kind of see that line
here, to go to the next page, and it gives you a little haptic response so you
can feel it. Squeeze the dot to go back, so you can go back and forth with one
hand on either side of the screen. That to me huge! And a
real selling point. You’ve never seen better looking text. They’ve also,
remember, we always hoped when the Amazon Kindle first came out that it would
be black text on a crisp white screen just like a real page, and it was always
a little disappointing that the E-ink technology didn’t allow for a completely
white screen. It was always a little bit blue gray, this is the highest contrast screen they’ve done. We’re
getting so close to a true black text on white paper screen! I just love this.
Of course, there’s many things that the Kindle does
that a book can’t do. Not only can you change the font size, you can change the
font itself. This is the default Kindle font, Cecilia, but it has a San Serif
font if you prefer that. Futura, it also has Helvetica
if you want to be classic. It’s also quite legible, you can also change line spacing and margins. One thing you can’t do, I don’t
understand why not, you can’t turn off write justification, Amazon really seems
to like that a lot. Now at this size it’s not too bad because the text is
fairly well curned, the spacing is fairly good, but
you probably noticed it when I had big text, that you just see these clumps in
between words, because they’re trying to write justify it, you don’t need to!
Can you stop doing that? Turn off the justification! Amazon does offer this in
a variety of flavors. The full price one, which ends up being I think $250, $269
includes 3G, so you can download when you’re on the way to the airport, or
wherever. Plus WIFI and no ads! But you can get down the price all the way to
200 bucks if you accept the ads and you take out the 3G capability. Most of you
will probably do that. Mostly because the ads are very unobtrusive, they’re
only on the front screen. In fact, frankly I prefer the ads on the front screen
to the really weird pattern that’s on the front screen when you don’t have ads.
Here I’ll turn it off and on and you can see it. There we go. Oh actually
that’s not so bad, it’s been on other ugly ones. This would be an ad now, so
the ads are not while you’re reading a book, they’re fairly unobtrusive, I
never thought the ads, but you don’t save a huge amount of money eliminating
the ads, only 20 bucks. I think this is the best Kindle ever. The pros, of course,
you see 321 people have highlighted that sentence! God only knows why, but that
might be something you’d like to pay attention to! This is an Agatha Christy Novel, have you ever read, And Then There Were None?
Jason: No.
Leo: It’s good stuff.
Chad: Sounds like a horror movie or song.
Leo: It is kind of, they all get killed at
the end.
Chad: Oh god.
Leo: I don’t think that’s a spoiler.
Chad: It looks like on the front page there,
it’s a little bit…
Leo: Does the Noose give it away?
Chad: Maybe a little foreshadow.
Leo: I just really think it’s a very, in
every way they’ve improved the kindle. High resolution means it’s easy to read.
The back lit screen is great at night and I love it that it dims so it doesn’t
blind me. Of course, as all Kindle’s it’s great on the beach, or bright sunlight because it’s a reflective surface. All these features, the X-ray,
the ability to change the brightness settings, all of this is just fantastic. By the way, you can turn off that auto brightness and just set
your brightness for whatever you want, depending on the room you’re in. It is a
fabulous device. The only con is really the price. You can get a kindle for 79 bucks, this at its cheapest is 199 dollars. But if you’re
serious about E—readers, if you’re serious about reading that is a great price.
4 gigs of storage on this, but the 3 gigs free, that’s plenty. Remember these
are text, so in a world where War in Paece is only
two megabytes, having 3 gigabytes is more than enough! That’s a lot of books! I
like to read programming books on the Kindle. There’s something I just need
text for and I want to read on the screen. I like to have the programming book
to the side when I’m programming on the screen. I really think they’ve done a
nice job. This is a definite buy, if you can get over that hump of the price.
Very nice job from Amazon on the Kindle, and yes, no you don’t get the case,
that’s another what, 50 or 60 bucks for, there are a variety of cases available
for these. I like to keep it in a little bit of case, this is the origami case,
which has a very cryptic and hard to understand system for creating a stand out
of it. I’m sure something like that. There you go. The case, see it worked! The
Kindle Voyage, a definite buy! Hey thank you Chad Johnson, it’s great to see
you. Thanks to Shannon Morse, Bryan Burnett, and, of course, Daniel Rubindo from Windows Central. Thanks to all of you for
Watching. We do before You Buy right after Security now. That’s Tuesday
afternoons on the TWiT network. Stop by. It’s usually around 3:30 pacific. 6:30 Eastern Time. But if you can’t make it live, don’t
worry, we’ve always got on demand versions. You can get the full show at
TWIT.tv/byb, but you can also go to YouTube, youtube.com/beforeyoubuy to not only get the full show, but also each
individual review so you can share it with friends if they’re interested, for
instance, in a Kindle. You can just say hey, here’s a quick review of the
Kindle. You can email us Byb@twit.tv we’d love
to hear your ideas for future shows. I did just get today, this is the latest
Moto phone, this is, I couldn’t get a Nexus 6 because they sold out so fast, so
I went to Verizon, they just put on sale, the Droid Turbo, which is essentially
a moto X with a giant battery and a 21 megapixel camera, plus a QHD screen, I
will have a review for you next week of this, as well as the new IPad! Which we
still haven’t gotten around to reviewing, we’ve got a lot to do! But do email
us if there’s stuff we’ve left out. Byb@twit.tv. And I know Jason Howell ordered and has got his
order through on a Nexus 6, so we’ll have a review of that for you when that
comes out in a few weeks. Thanks for being here! And remember, you’ve got to
watch Before You Buy! We’ll see you next time.
